I dance alone

A warm night and a girl with a mind all disquieted by the day, they went off together to dance their worries away. The dance was once a fear, now it was relief. The girl found a strange new friend in new beats she met there.

There was a sanctity to that moment of  her abandon. She sways and swings, moves with effortless grace to the rhythms of that abandon. She loves how the solitude is merged with those of all those many bodies swaying with hers. No one cares, the only thing that matters is the moment. A gracious moment that accepts all.

I met her there. I, the ghost of her Christmas' Past.  She looked me in the eye, with a strange sad smile on her face. She looked. She smiled. She waved goodbye, walked away and didn't look back.

A certain me

           Independence is a heady thing. Like that first taste of vodka, it is a rush of feeling:  the strange tang in your mouth,  fire blazing to your belly, slowing, settling into a pleasant glow all over.  I find in me a bottomless pit, craving that exquisite rush. 

           It took me a long time to leave home... I remember when I was rearing to go, to leave and never look back. It did not happen though - not then. Slowly, the urge to leave died down and I settled into that comfortable routine of life. It was not an unpleasant life, no. In a way, it was a time for learning  about those familiar faces whose lives were intertwined with mine -- family, friends, teachers, neighbors...to gradually see them without the distorting myopia of childhood.  I wondered at these curious creatures that inhabited my life -- these courageous beings, familiar, but not quite.

       When it was finally time to leave, I thithered, fidgeted, vacillated trying to find the will to leave. Leave I did - told  myself 'adventures are not bad'; and it certainly has been one. It felt awkward at first - this new skin I was trying on; and lonely, strange and scary. Silently, the new skin has somehow melded in with the old and it feels more completely like 'me'. I fit into it and it suits me well.

        I love the people I am with. I love the place I am at. I hate my boss (that unbearable chauvinist!).  I love and hate, I dread, rage and roar with laughter, I dream and not work for them - all of it feels like me, and I feel free to be all that. This place, this time in my life is about knowing 'me'.   And  I find that "25  is a bottomless pit - nothing I consume weighs me down. I have so much more room in me that I used to..."( via Linz)

          
    

Memories

          'Memories are more precious to me than possessions'. If there is only one thing someone is allowed to leave with, I can understand how they could walk away with just a shoe-box full of memories.  I wonder at the person I would be without all of mine. Most of them are intangible glimpses of my perceptions - of people, places, time, experiences.  

            If I wanted to be specific, I would say 'memories are my skewed perceptions'. After all, it is not truly 'what is' that I see. I see, choose out of what I see and then I interpret, and store that interpretation. And whenever I retrieve them, they are susceptible to alterations. So yes, memories are not always true. But somehow, all that science doesn't diminish what memories truly mean to me. Imperfect as they are, it defines me as I am now. 

          Each memory holds within it the essence of our emotions of that moment. Whenever I think of 'harmony', it is one place and a certain journey that comes to mind... one long trek from Tutupani to Muraldhanda.  It was mid-April, most of the snow had melted off on the hills of Himachal. If you would look carefully, you would find some chunks of snow like mud-soaked memories of winter, hiding in those corners and crevices. We had started off early in the morning. There was a chill in the air; it was fresh, the world calm. We walked along  the curving mountain roads, with the huge drop on one side and the Rhododendrons splashing the world with color.

        

             I had on my most comfortable pair of sneakers, an old windcheater with the hood down, and was toting an even older backpack (God alone knows how many people had used it before me?!).  It was a long walk. I was starting to get a little tired, a little depressed and then it started drizzling. First, there were splashes of darker gray on the road, then it spread... A few moments, then it was a downpour. I could feel the water dripping onto my face, flowing down my nose, my clothes getting soaked. I pulled the hood up and kept walking. I was watching the road - the way it curves, how it slowly got drenched, and those rivulets flowing across the road.

             Suddenly, I looked up. Stopped. Held my breath.

             Lo behold! the world was beautiful. It was like everything had taken on this dazzling hue: the flowers were more red, the grass more green, the soil full of life and the water swishing, swirling, tumbling down the drop.  I was in a moment of absolute perfection - life in all its beauty. 

            Years have passed since. Time seems have washed away a lot of the details, leaving only the very essence of that moment - the being in harmony with the universe. And so it is, that I  too would walk away with just a shoe box full of memories - of old photographs, that broken watch, the pressed carnation inside that well worn book...

“For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.”

Ha! Finally I created a blog. The stupidest thing to do to the world. As if  it were not enough to dump all those rambling thoughts onto a diary...
 Do not be mislead by the title -- it is primarily a state of my mind.